Accompapianomanianist

The Internet doesn't visit the place I'm living right now, and for this cause I haven't posted to my blog. It's refreshingly nice and surprisingly tolerable to disconnect from the tubes while I'm at home. I can't email or blog or check the FacenBok or mindlessly surf. However, did you know you can download the entire Wikipedia? Well, you can, and I have. So I can browse the Wikipedia despite my webless abode.

Another great thing about my current home is its proximity to work (and Apollo Burger). Most days, I walk to work. I love walking to work. I absolutely love walking to work. And thankfully, I also like walking home from work. A few times, on my way home, as I've passed the Catholic ... I'm going to call it a church even though it's labeled "Catholic Center." So as I've passed the church, in the dimming light of the evening, the bells start ringing while people go inside to worship. It makes me smile.

Penultimately, I'm now the proud owner of a piano. I've been considering buying one for several months and have been saving up for it. Finally, yesterday, I got it. It's electric (thinking that I'll probably still be living in apartment-style dwellings for a least a little longer and should use headphones), but the action and weighting is nearly true to an acoustic. Also, the title of this post corresponds to this paragraph and should be attributed to Barb, who, if I remember right, coined the term for Mr. Hill's benefit.

Finally, since the Super Bowl's going on today (right now, eh?), I must offer an obligatory cheer to my team:



Go Tigers!!!

Those cool tickers

Everyone has those cool tickers and badges and things on their blogs. And since this is a blog, I feel like I should fall in line.

So, here's my marriage countdown timer:

Here's a stick figure drawing of my family, not unlike the version stuck to the back of SUVs. (Do people take the time to update those?)



Here's my baby timer:



... send in the butterflies!

Holidaze

Yesterday was Saturday. So was the day before. And so was the day before that. Tomorrow is Monday. Today, when I first remembered that tomorrow is Monday, I couldn't remember what projects I'm working on and thought, "I wonder if I still know how to program..." Time will tell.

One of my family's best traditions is Practice Thanksgiving. Here's a good way to imagine it (remember these from elementary school?):

Practice Thanksgiving : Thanksgiving :: Rehearsal : Performance

After this year's two practices, the real thing went very well. We elected for the "healthy" yams instead of the healthy yams, the rolls were butter-sodden and fluffy...

Aside: I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave this earth clutching my failing heart as it struggles to pump blood through my dry, sealed arteries. Either that, or the butter and bacon grease lubricating my veins will ease my heart's burden to the tune of 40 extra years of life. End aside.

...I made a banana cream pie with a pecan, graham cracker crust (ingredients: 1 pkg graham crackers, 3/4 c. or so pecans, 1 Tbsp sugar, 1 stick butter). Definitely my favorite pie. The turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce (made fresh by Mom), gravy and green beans all tasted great. And it was fun to spend the day with my family.

No pic today. But the square root of 689 is about 26.3

Arranged Marriage

I just signed into Family Search to follow through with a request made by my stake. On my pedigree chart there's a link below my name that says "Add or find wife." I clicked on it hopefully, but then it asks me for her name. How is that supposed to help me find a wife?

I'm thinking I might just fill it in anyway...

:)

Squarish Roots

I love math and I love solving clever math problems. This guy is pretty cool. Well, he's a nerd, but he's a pretty cool nerd. Also, Donald encounters square roots here.

Anyway, for the longest time I've wondered how to quickly find the ballpark square root of a number. The square root of 9 is easy, but what about 10, or 11, or 8,387? Chace once said that his dad knew of a way that was pretty quick, but we couldn't figure it out. Or maybe Chace figured it out and never told me :)

Well, I finally found a way! So.... here we go:

How I figured it out:
What's the square root of 10? It's probably just bigger than 3 because

3 * 3 = 9

Squares can be represented with squares. Go figure. Here's a 3x3:

000
000
000

We'll define

A1 = x2 = 9 (area of square)
x = 3 (side of square)

Then let's define:

A2 = (x + Δx)2 = 10 (area of new square)
x + Δx = ? (side of new square - this is the answer to the original question)

The new square has four sections:

1113
0002
0002
0002

section 0: area encompassing the original 3x3 square
section 1: additional area on top
section 2: additional area on the side
section 3: additional area in the top right corner

Asection 0 = x2 = 9
Asection 1 = x(Δx)
Asection 2 = x(Δx)
Asection 3 = (Δx)2

And here's the cool part! (You didn't think there'd be a cool part, did you?) Δx is less than 1, because otherwise x + Δx = 4 (or more) which squares to 16. And since I just want the ballpark answer, I can ignore the area of section 3. That leads to:

111
0002
0002
0002

If we set the total area of that shape to 10, then we can easily find Δx:

A2 = x2 + 2x(Δx)
... (math) ...
Δx = (A2 - x2) / 2x
  = (10 - 9) / 2(3)
  = 1 / 6
  = 0.16

√10 ≈ x + Δx
   ≈ 3.16

Which is close to the real answer:

3.16227766

Steps for any number:
Given any number (let's call it N):
1. Choose a number, x, whose square is just less than N

N = 8,387
1002 = 10,000 (too big)
502 = 2,500 (too small)
902 = 8,100 (perfect)
x = 90

2. Take the difference of N and x² (and call it d)

d = N - x2
 = 8387 - 8100
 = 287

3. This equation:

(x + a)2 = x2 + 2xa + a2

tells us the difference effected in a square by incrementing the root by a. For example:

22 = 4

(2 + 1)2 = 22 + 2(2)(1) + 12
        = 22 + 5 (so adding 1 to the root increases the square by 5)
        = 9 = 32

(2 + 5)2 = 22 + 2(2)(5) + 52
        = 22 + 45 (so adding 5 to the root increases the square by 45)
        = 49

So choose a to get as close as you can to d without going over (and call that value b):

2xa + a2
2(90)(1) + 12 = 181
2(90)(2) + 22 = 364 (too big)

b = 181
a = 1

Add your chosen a to make a new x:

x = 91

4. If you want more precision (x is already within 1 of the answer), subtract b from d:

d = 287 - 181
  = 106

then divide that number by 2x:

106 / 2x = 106 / 2(91)
         = 106 / 182
         = 53 / 91
         ≈ 5/9
         ≈ .55

Add that result to x and you've got a pretty precise answer:

√8387 ≈ 91.55 (estimate)
      = 91.58 (real answer)

So here's one done really quickly with even less precision:

√127 = ?
102 = 100
127 - 100 = 27
27 / (2*10) = 1 + 7/20
7/20 = .35
√127 ≈ 11.35 (estimate; not bad)
     = 11.26 (actual answer)

On that one, if I knew that 11² = 121, then

112 = 121
127 - 121 = 6
6 / (2*11) = 6 / 22
           = 3 / 11
           = 3 * (1 / 11)
           ≈ 3 * .09
           ≈ .27
√127 ≈ 11.27 (even better)
     = 11.26 (actual answer)

67th Post

My mom rarely paints her nails -- she "doesn't like the suffocating feeling." It therefore follows that my mom rarely removes paint from her nails.

With my mom's help, I dressed up as Frankenstein for my orchestra concert last Tuesday (or rather, to satisfy the prescriptivists, I dressed as The Modern Prometheus). I had the bolts, the dark hair, the dead-looking flesh and blackened nails -- only the fingers; I neglected painting the toes since I'd be wearing shoes.

To complete my getup, I bought a nice suit from D.I. (parenthetically, how does one punctuate the end of a sentence in which the last word ends with the mark you intend to use? It feels a little silly to write it again. People might read it like they're descending a flight of seven stairs expecting six) . The suit fit right about my waist, and fit most of my legs nicely as well. See for yourself:


I enjoyed the concert -- we played some fun "scary" songs:

• Danse Macabre - listen to this one if you have time for only one song.
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice - but in real life... not cartooned.
• Baba Yaga something something - the conductor on this video is funny, though I wouldn't enjoy playing for him. He hasn't always a very pronounced ictus.
• Pumpkin Eater's Fugue - can't find a recording,
• and Noon Witch Overture - it's okay... not my favorite.
  

And I scared some kids.

Finally at home I unscrewed the bolt from my neck, showered out the darkness from my hair, cleaned the deadness from my face and asked my mom to help me remove the blackness from my fingers' nails. She pulled out the bottle of remover (that she probably bought when she was four years old and hadn't used in a decade) and only managed restoring six nails to life before running out. So I went to work on Wednesday as an emo kid. Without the goofy hair.

Contemplative Frank:


Drum-playing Frank with fellow drummers:

Hundreds of Thousands of Words

Here are some things I've been working on lately. I'd put them on my more nerdly blog, but I'm not explaining anything technical here... so... here:

This demonstrates a simple watchdog timer thinger. The circuit will activate unless in receives a signal within a certain amount of time.



We (at work) used that circuit to power this fan so that when our website went down, the fan would turn on:


I fixed the dome light in my car. No, this was not the cheapest way to fix it. Yes, it was fun to do. Yes, it's pretty bright. And it makes me smile when I get in my car at night.


(and no, the light isn't just dangling from the ceiling -- this photo was taken before I put it in the cover)

And this is one of my mom's flowers before we pulled them all out before winter: